ᴀɴɢᴇʟ | ᴊᴇɴꜱᴏᴏ

fifteen

The hospital corridor is stuffy and the air has an undertone of bleach and sterilization. The walls were white and scraped in places from the hundreds of trolleys that have bumped into them. The pictures on the walls are cheap benign prints of uplifting scenes and above the double doors are large blue plastic signs with the areas of the hospital that lie ahead.

The air had a perfumed scent of iodoform and the seats were plush. Every surface was dustless. The nurses hurried and they moved with a serene purposefulness from room to room on their rounds. There were vases of flowers and beautiful framed pieces of art on the walls. In the corridor was a water dispenser and in most rooms could be heard the noise of a television.

Jennie couldn't pay attention to anything. She sat in the seat right outside of the emergency room, staring at her hands as if she had touched something she wasn't able to wash off. She wore an unreadable expression on her face, ignoring that fact that Junhoe was pacing back and forth in front of her while being on the phone with someone. He seemed angry, Jennie noticed. But,Jennie noticed everything-the countless beeping from machines down the hall, the untold footsteps across the tile floor, the exasperating gibberish the floated in the air forming incomplete sentences as she heard different conversations.

She didn't want to be there. She wanted everything to go away along with her worries and her fear. She just wanted everything to be okay. She wondered how she got herself in this position, how Jisoo had ended up in this position. The brunette constantly blamed herself in her mind that it was all her fault, that she should've done something about it in the first place like speaking with her father. But, that wouldn't work out so well either.

Jennie was trembling. She couldn't get the scene in her head when Jisoo had hovered over her in order to protect her from the incoming golf club. Jennie cursed; she shouldn't have done that. She should've been the one to take the hit. But, what's done, is done. There was no way to go back.

The emotions she felt was overwhelming, so Jennie bent down and placed her face into her palms in an attempt to stop her tears from flowing. She tried to ignore her feelings and tried to listen to the endless noise of the hospital hallway, trying to count numbers in her head to keep her emotions at bay, but she couldn't help it. It became hard for her to even breathe, to think, to speak.

She didn't even notice the woman who had come up to stand right in front of her. The woman kneeled down and watched her cry, before placing her hands into Jennie's shoulder and pulled her into a heartfelt hug.

"It's okay," Lisa whispered, "She'll be okay. You'll be okay."

At those words, Jennie cried even harder, no matter how hard she tried to hold it back. She sobbed silently into Lisa's shoulders until she had calmed down a bit. It wasn't long until Rosé joined soon after, holding cups of coffee for all four of them including Junhoe.

Jennie held the cup of coffee in her hand, but she had never taken a sip of it. She held it to keep her palms warm, seeing as thought it had gotten cold since the time she was bound by ropes.

Guilt racked in her system. Her mind kept telling her that it was all her fault and the amount of times she had said that in her head, she almost believed it. But, she was sure it wasn't the right thing to think. And if she said it aloud, her friends would just protest and deny it.

It almost seemed like it had been an hour until a man in a long, white lab coat stepped out of the emergency hall. The doctor had the posture of a soldier. Every action he took was precise and purposeful. He even smiled in the cold and distant way professionals do. Jennie couldn't relax around such expressions.

The moment he was close enough to talk,Jennie stood up, as well as Lisa who was kneeling on the floor.

The doctor smiled at them softly and glanced around the group, "Are you all relatives of Kim Jisoo?"